Coral Bleaching facts

While investigating facts about Coral Bleaching Great Barrier Reef and Coral Bleaching Definition, I found out little known, but curios details like:

93% of the Great Barrier Reef is now damaged by coral bleaching

how coral bleaching affects marine life?

Coral reefs once thought completely dead from heat, bleaching, CO2 induced ocean acidification, and other stressors can recover faster than anyone thought in what's called the Phoenix Effect

Explain what coral bleaching is?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what causes coral bleaching. Here are 12 of the best facts about Coral Bleaching Causes and Coral Bleaching Effects I managed to collect.

what's coral bleaching?

1. We are now experiencing one of the largest coral bleaching event on record, due to the current, intense, El Niño conditions. Bleaching occurs when the corals expel the algae that live in their tissues because of extreme sea temperatures, causing large swaths of reef to die.

2. The use of sunscreen can cause coral bleaching; the main component of sunscreen, titanium dioxide, forms hydrogen peroxide, OH- and superoxides (O2-) in water, all of which contribute to coral bleaching. 10% of bleached coral is estimated to have been caused by sunscreen alone.

3. Somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 tons of sunscreen enters coral reef areas every year and may be contributing the coral bleaching

4. The island nation of Palau has proposed a law permitting only 5* hotels and resorts to be built there in the future to help control access to the island and prevent things like coral bleaching.

5. ~50% of the Great Barrier Reef died in 2016 and 2017 due to coral bleaching. That's are area of about 344,000 sq km.

6. In 2016, aerial survey revealed that along 4000km of the Great Barrier Reef, only 4 out of 500 individual reefs displayed no signs of coral bleaching. The cause was a rise in temperatures, which led to the coral expelling algae called ‘zooxanthellae’—the source of their color.

7. Sunscreen use is causing coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef and other areas by promoting viral infections

8. Gamefreak is introducing a new bleached and sad version of the Coral Pokemon Corsola, that will represent the Coral Reefs are dying.

9. Coral bleaching will turn ocean reefs into dead ecosystems in 20 years, we could save them if we restore plankton cooling, but currently we're not doing anything about the problem